- Headline
-
What's Wrong With The Truth About Hitler?
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, September 9, 1941
- Historical Event
-
Charles Lindbergh Makes ‘Un-American’ Speech
This database includes 1,447 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 6
- Author/Byline
- --
- Article Text
- The American sense of fair play is certain to revolt at the Senatorial "investigation" of the movies which is at hand. The sub-committee has been carefully packed with Senators who somehow believe that to try to tell the truth about Hitler is to spread dangerous propaganda. Their purpose is plainly not investigation but intimidation.
Senator NYE, co-author of the project, has already explained it by saying that "great Americans like Senator WHEELER, Colonel LINDBERGH and General WOOD are in many places denied the use of a hall to speak up for America," whereas Hollywood "can address 80,000,000 people a week, cunningly and persistently inoculating them with the virus of war." The America Firsters have in some local instances been very mistakenly denied the use of halls, but the remedy for such isolated efforts to deny free speech is certainly not to attempt to apply the same thing to all of the movie theaters in the land. If Senator NYE is sincere when, for example, he howls about Oklahoma City officials refusing a public hall to LINDBERGH, then he ought to be howling about this censorial "investigation," instead of promoting it.
In justice to the Senate, it should be said that this is not a scheme which can be blamed on its whole membership. The enterprise will be loosely known as a Senate inquiry, but actually it is the device of only a few members. The Senate itself has not called for any investigation of the movies. What has happened is that Senator NYE, along with Senator CLARK of Missouri, has introduced a resolution requesting the Senate to call for an investigation, and Senator WHEELER, as chairman of the Interstate Commerce Committee, has eagerly handpicked a subcommittee to hold hearings on that request. It is simply a scheme to gain an audience for reckless charges against the movies and, sad to say, for such evil insinuations as Senator NYE's when he proclaimed that "in this great era of world upset, when national and racial emotions run riot . . . this mighty engine of propaganda is in the hands of men who are naturally susceptible to these emotions."
The question originally proposed by Senators NYE and CLARK was whether both movies and radio "are being used as instruments of propaganda to get the United States into this war," but so far they have centered their attacks upon the movies and revised their request so that now it covers not merely the content of films but the whole economic structure of the movie industry. Of course, no fact about Hollywood, economic or otherwise, can be considered fairly, temperately or constructively in the atmosphere of Senator NYE's allegations.
But fortunately one question has formed itself in millions of American minds and looms above all others in this entire matter. That question is: Supposing some films have been anti-HITLER, why this solicitude for HITLER in the United States Senate? - History Unfolded Contributor
- Sergio M.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Charles Lindbergh Makes ‘Un-American’ Speech
- The United States and the Holocaust (Encyclopedia article)
- Transcript of Lindbergh’s September 11, 1941, speech in Des Moines, Iowa (PBS, American Experience)
- Fallen Hero: Charles Lindbergh in the 1940s (PBS, American Experience)
- Charles Lindbergh's - September 11, 1941 Speech in Des Moines, Iowa (partial audio; Spirit of St. Louis 2 Project)
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